Can a Plant Heal Cancer Patients? Bringing to Light the Research of Mirko Beljanski by JANET RAE-DUPREE

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COVER STORY Can a plant heal cancer patients? Bringing to light the research of Mirko Beljanski BY JANET RAE-DUPREE

78 Stone paper 34 The next big environmental thing? The fight for BY KARIN KLEIN GMO labeling Seriously, are GMOs safe? BY MARY MACVEAN COVER PHOTOGRAPH: THE BELJANSKI FOUNDATION COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Table of Contents

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42 66 The Bible: A new look at an old book Natural Two provocative excerpts about the Bible Entrepreneurship BY CAREL VAN SCHAIK AND KAI MICHEL Principles for sustainable business BY JERRY B. BROWN AND JULIE M. BROWN BY ROB WILLIAMS PHOTOS BY BRUCE HEINEMAN

STORIES POSSIBILITY, INCLUDING: 13 Mars company gets healthy HEALTH & HEALING LIFE 14 Drones that save lives 24 Can a plant heal 66 Nature is the best 15 Pollution: a civil rights violation cancer patients? business consultant 17 LocoL food in L.A. Mirko Beljanski’s research into plants that Principles for sustainable business found in 21 The European Union: can affect and heal cancer is finally getting nature that can change the way you think just a big friendly club the respect it deserves. about business and the world around you. 23 Toward a more civil political discourse 34 The fight for SUSTAINABILITY & INNOVATION GMO labeling REGULARS 78 Rock, paper, progress The debate rages as anti-GMO activists 06 Community push the United States to join more than A new stone-based paper from Taiwan may 08 Ode to: Zuzana Caputova five dozen countries that have mandatory save the forests—or just create a recycling food package labeling. conundrum. 10 Ode to: the American buffalo 41 Column: Paulo Coelho

SPIRIT 64 Living Possibility: Dear Roz 42 New look at an old book 83 Column: Amy Domini Excerpts from The Good Book of Human 85 Inspiration: Books and products Nature: An Evolutionary Reading of the Bible 88 A better place: City life and The Psychedelic Gospels: The Secret History of Hallucinogens in Christianity

58 Handiwork of the heart An excerpt from Pathways to Possibility that offers a story to help in creating connections that are missing in our lives. Health and Healing Can a plant heal cancer patients?

The research of Mirko Beljanski, the “father of environmental medicine,” is getting the respect it deserves, 18 years after his death. BY JANET RAE-DUPREE

24 THEOPTIMIST.COM SUMMER 2016 PHOTOGRAPHS: THE BELJANSKI FOUNDATION SOUTH AMERICAN INDIGENOUS PEOPLE TRADITIONALLY USED PAO PEREIRA.

SUMMER 2016 THEOPTIMIST.COM 25 eloid leukemia. French news media didn’t cover the raid. There were no press releases about the Beljanskis’ arrest. No criminal trial ever took place. A European Union court later found he was denied due process and the government was ordered to cover his legal fees. So why were the Beljanskis arrested? And how did Mirko Beljanski’s lifelong research path come to open new avenues for treating cancer and, possibly, preventing its development in the first place? Over the course of his four decades of research, Beljanski came to be viewed as a scientific pariah by colleagues at the same time his discoveries were credited with curing cases of pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and even AIDS. The story begins in post–World War II Serbia, where in 1946 the Yugoslavian government granted Beljanski a two-year educa- tional fellowship to study in Paris. Recently relieved from his duties fighting the German DR. MIRKO BELJANSKI invasion, 22-year-old Beljanski moved to AT WORK IN HIS LAB. Paris and enrolled at the Sorbonne, where he discovered a passion for biochemistry and biological research. After the World Health HEN FRENCH OFFICIALS Rumors had circulated that the late French Organization gave him a second two-year order troops from the Na- president François Mitterand was using grant, Beljanski was hired in 1951 by the tional Gendarmerie Inter- some of the lab’s products to fight his pros- Pasteur Institute’s Department of Chemical vention Group, or GIGN, tate cancer before it had ultimately killed Biology to complete his doctoral work. toW apprehend a criminal suspect, it’s a cer- him a few months earlier. Other than that, These were the early days of genetics tainty that a truly nasty character is about Saint-Prim’s 800 or so residents knew little and molecular biology. James Watson and to be taken down. These elite anti-terrorist about what went on at CIRIS. Francis Crick were still two years away from soldiers—brought together for special forces Abruptly, soldiers broke down the main unveiling the curiously twisted double-helix training following the Munich Olympics building’s front door, ordering its sleeping structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. massacre in 1974—have freed hostages occupants from their beds and handcuffing Penicillin, the first antibiotic, had been in from hijacked airliners and remote island their primary target—73-year-old Yugo- use for only a decade. Other antibiotics were caves, guarded Olympians and French gov- slavia-born biochemist Mirko Beljanski, trickling to market, but researchers already ernment leaders, quelled prison riots and ar- “the father of environmental medicine.” were seeing signs that bacteria had begun to rested France’s most wanted criminals for It took nearly 12 hours to load the lab’s resist the medicine’s curative effects. more than four decades. equipment, voluminous files, research notes Asked to investigate this antibiotic re- So when several dozen heavily armed and experimental materials into a caravan sistance, Beljanski discovered that bacteria GIGN soldiers blocked all roads into the of trucks. During that time, teams of secur- able to survive an antibiotic onslaught ac- small hamlet of Saint-Prim, in the coun- ity forces conducted similar raids and con- cumulate a larger internal supply of RNA, try’s Rhône-Alpes region, at sunrise on fiscations at the lab’s suppliers elsewhere in or ribonucleic acids, than do the same type October 9, 1996, villagers knew to keep France and at Beljanski’s Paris apartment, of bacteria that have never been exposed to their distance. where his wife of 45 years, fellow researcher antibiotics. (RNA, a molecule in the same Stealthily, the troops surrounded a former Monique Lucas Beljanski, also was arrested. family as DNA but formed with a single winery estate on the Rhône River where sci- Two years after the laden trucks rolled “backbone” rather than DNA’s double back- entists had established a nonprofit laboratory out of Saint-Prim—months after govern- bone, performs a number of roles inside cells called the Center of Scientific Innovation, ment agents had rounded up and destroyed related to the production of proteins and ex- Research and Information (CIRIS) to seek CIRIS’s plant extracts and dietary supple- pression of genes.) alternative cancer and AIDS treatments. ments—Mirko Beljanski died of acute my- The discovery made Beljanski one of the

26 THEOPTIMIST.COM SUMMER 2016 first molecular biologists to study RNA and and genes called all the shots, and the Bel- its role in cell regulation. His work ultim- janskis’ work was no longer in favor. Un- Beljanski came to be ately upended the previous accepted wisdom daunted, Beljanski continued looking for about what makes cancerous cells different new types of RNA. And he found them. viewed as a scientific from normal cells and brings us to today’s So-called transforming RNA could move ongoing research at centers in the United information from one species of bacteria to pariah by colleagues States, where the plant extracts he refined another and then insert that information into are making advances against prostate, pan- the new species’ DNA. Subsequent genera- at the same time his creatic, ovarian and even brain cancer and tions of this species could then inherit these the RNA fragments he synthesized helped new genetic traits. discoveries were 70 patients in a 2010 clinical study complete Beljanski began experimenting with their full schedule of chemotherapy. customized RNA fragments able to protect credited with curing otherwise healthy cells in cancer patients ELJANSKI’S CAREER BEGAN AT THE from the destructive effects of chemother- cases of pancreatic, same time that the field of molecu- apy and radiation. Noting that the immune breast and prostate Blar biology did, with the discovery systems of cancer patients often became of how DNA’s double helix stores and de- dangerously depressed during treatment, he ploys genetic information. For more than 40 focused his efforts on bone marrow stem cancer and AIDS. years, molecular biologists focused solely on cells—the birthplace of critical immune sys- genetics, protein expression and how muta- tem components like white blood cells and tions to genes could cause cancer. Study the platelets. Ultimately, he synthesized RNA “letters” of the genetic alphabet, the theory fragments he dubbed “primers” that act like went, and you would spot “typos” that lead an accelerant on bone marrow stem cells, to cancer. Figure out how to prevent those prompting them to generate critical new im- typos and you could learn how to stop can- mune system cells to replace any destroyed cer in its tracks. during chemotherapy. But Beljanski demonstrated that the pri- Beljanski’s research continued to under- mary physical difference between normal cut more broadly accepted theories around and cancerous DNA lies within the structure genetic mutations and RNA’s one-way of the double helix itself. DNA in cancer- communication role. The Pasteur Institute ous cells has unwound, leaving gaping loops reduced his group’s funding, relegated his and holes where the two curving sides of the researchers to basement facilities and tried to double helix fail to latch securely to each thwart efforts to publish their positive results other any longer. in academic journals. Finally, in 1978, the These “destabilized DNA,” as Beljanski Pasteur Institute evicted Beljanski’s research Beljanski’s extracts dubbed them, are made that way by carcino- team. The group moved to the University of gens and pollutants randomly attaching to Châtenay-Malabry’s School of Pharmacy, RAUWOLFIA VOMITORIA, ALSO KNOWN sites along the molecule and slowly prying it where Beljanski won a research contract as the poison devil’s pepper, is extracted open. By contrast, the two strands of a DNA with the French army to work on protecting from the root bark of a tree native to molecule in normal cells open only tempor- human skin from the scarring effects of radi- tropical Africa but now is found in many arily and in small areas to allow for replica- ation aboard nuclear submarines. other tropical areas, including India, China, tion or gene expression. This was where he first began to seek Bangladesh, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, where In 1956, a New York University scientist out naturally occurring anti-carcinogenic it is regarded as an invasive species. Trad- (who later won a Nobel Prize for his dis- substances. He looked first to Ginkgo bi- itional medicine has used it for centuries covery of the mechanisms involved in the loba trees, after hearing stories about how to treat hypertension, mental disturbances, synthesis of RNA) invited Mirko and Mo- resistant they had been to radiation from the snakebite and cholera. nique to a two-year fellowship in America. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Pao pereira is an extract from the bark of Plagued by infighting within the Pasteur Nagasaki. Despite promising results from a tree found in the Amazon region of Brazil, Institute, the couple moved to New York, a ginkgo extract, however, the army—not Geissospermum vellosii. It has traditionally where Monique, already pregnant with their wanting to acknowledge responsibility for been used in folk medicine to treat malaria, first child, gave birth to daughter Sylvie. any injury submarine sailors might have suf- upset stomachs and fever and is used as a By the time the family returned to Paris fered—barred the group from publishing sexual stimulant. in early 1959, leadership at the Pasteur In- their research and ultimately decided against stitute was united in believing that DNA continuing to pursue the research.

SUMMER 2016 THEOPTIMIST.COM 27 After a decade at Châtenay-Malabry, healthy cells, perhaps there are other sub- alongside cancerous ones—both types of Beljanski reached the mandatory French re- stances that do the opposite. Might some cell death can occur with those therapies. It tirement age of 67 and was forced to stop compounds kill cancer cells while bypassing can be a messy business. working for any government-funded agency. normal cells? But both Pao pereira and Rauwolfia When a French businessman whose son had Through trial and error and by combing vomitoria slip easily into cancerous cells just died of leukemia heard about Beljan- through journals for references to likely can- while leaving normal, healthy cells un- ski’s work and offered a few months later didates, his researchers ultimately focused touched. Once inside, both extracts readily to fund a nonprofit research center in Saint- on two plants from the dogbane family: persuade cancerous cells to commit cellu- Prim with Beljanski as its chief researcher, the innocuous-sounding Pao pereira and lar suicide and let natural mechanisms take he agreed immediately. This time, however, the somewhat dubious-sounding Rauwolfia out the trash. If all went well, doctors might he focused his research on finding specific vomitoria (see sidebar for details). no longer have to burn the body’s village treatments for cancer and HIV. It’s helpful to know that there are two pri- in order to save it. Interestingly, Beljanski First, he wanted to know more about mary kinds of cell death: the suicide of “pro- discovered—and subsequent peer-reviewed substances in the environment that can grammed cell death,” or apoptosis (from the studies confirmed—that one or both of these cause cancer. He developed a simple labora- ancient Greek for “falling off”), and necro- plant extracts given at the same time as low- tory test, the Oncotest, to check whether a sis, which occurs as a result of injury, infec- dose radiation or chemotherapy proved far compound affected cells in the way already tion or some other outside trauma. While more effective than either treatment regi- known carcinogens did. To his surprise, a cellular janitors routinely clean up after men on its own. number of substances previously deemed apoptosis, necrosis usually involves severe Beljanski never sought out patients to try harmless pried open DNA just as readily as inflammation. any of his experimental therapies. Instead, known carcinogens did. That got him think- Because synthetic chemotherapy and starting with an aging farmer in 1982, they ing. If compounds exist that cause cancerous radiation aren’t choosy about which cells managed to find him. Jean Le Guen was cells to proliferate but have little impact on they destroy—wiping out healthy cells right nearing retirement when he was diagnosed

In good company

MIRKO BELJANSKI ISN’T THE FIRST, NOR THE LAST, SCIENTIST TO his work and disregarded atomic theory because they believed be denigrated for exploring new ideas. physical science was based entirely on energy conditions, a field Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis wondered why of study they called “energetics.” women at the Vienna maternity clinic where he worked in 1848 He had what was regarded as a successful career holding were dying of so-called childbed fever, known clinically as puerperal prominent university positions, but he became despondent in fever. He discovered that women who gave birth at clinics with his later years as he spent increasingly more time defending doctors and medical students in attendance were five times more his theories. In September 1906, Boltzmann hanged himself. likely to die of this fever than were women who had their babies Two years later, Jean Baptiste Perrin confirmed the existence with midwives. The key difference, Semmelweis determined, was of atoms. that his colleagues conducted autopsies, while midwives did not. Some scientists live to see their work vindicated. Neurologist Before there was any inkling that germs existed, he surmised that and biochemist Dr. Stanley Prusiner endured 15 years of scorn “cadaverous particles”—unseen bits of a corpse—were getting after he discovered an infectious protein known as a prion in inside female patients, and he demanded that his staff wash their 1982. Ultimately, prions were found to be the infectious agent hands and medical instruments thoroughly before moving from an behind Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—a.k.a. mad cow disease—and autopsy to a birth. Fatalities from childbed fever dropped. More are believed to contribute to a number of other brain disorders, than two decades after his death, his work was vindicated by including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and Louis Pasteur’s germ theory. Huntington’s disease. Prusiner’s prion hypothesis—that harm- Austrian theoretical physicist and mathematician Ludwig Boltz- less prions can be found throughout the human brain but begin mann first proposed in the 1870s, as he worked to understand the to kill neurons and create holes in the brain when they fold into laws of thermodynamics, that matter is made up of molecules and abnormal shapes—was widely rejected at first. Now the director atoms. His efforts created the foundation for a field that came to of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University be known as statistical mechanics, but his insights weren’t appre- of California, San Francisco, Prusiner was awarded the Nobel Prize ciated at the time. Instead, other prominent physicists dismissed in 1997 for his work with prions.

28 THEOPTIMIST.COM SUMMER 2016 MIRKO WITH HIS WIFE AND RESEARCH PARTNER MONIQUE BELJANSKI

with a tumor on his pancreas that was resistant to both chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Doctors told him he had less than three months to live. Through a friend of his wife’s, Le Guen asked the Beljanskis for their formulations. After some debate, they decided to let him try them. The tumor became amenable to radiation, stopped grow- ing and began to shrink. He continued taking maintenance doses of all three supplements until 1985, and died in his mid-nineties, following an accident several years ago. Le Guen was a popular union representative in Bretagne, and his story spread quickly; soon scores of cancer patients were seeking out the extracts. In 1986, 40-year-old Gerard Weidlich, a former military officer, called to say that about France’s future as it weighed wheth- he’d heard about Pao pereira extract’s anti- er to join the European Union—a move In some cases, viral properties. He had HIV, an RNA-based that Mitterand supported. Politicians were virus, that he hoped could be treated with jockeying for position in the event the presi- the combination the extract. The first release of the common dent died. But his mistress, Anne Pingeon, AIDS medication AZT was still a year away. introduced him to Dr. Philippe de Kuyper, of the extracts with Beljanski protested that the extract had never a classically trained physician who knew of been tested on HIV, but Weidlich persuaded Beljanski’s work. The two hit it off and— chemotherapy him to try anyway. Within two weeks of be- to the chagrin of Mitterand’s official phys- ginning to take the supplement, Weidlich’s ician, Claude Gubler—de Kuyper began destroyed up to health improved. Within a few years on Pao secretly prescribing Beljanski’s extracts for pereira, his viral load was undetectable. He Mitterand. 98 percent of went on to live in good health for two more Soon Mitterand grew stronger, gained decades, dying of an embolism in May 2007. weight and began to look healthier than he cancer cells. As anecdotal testimonials about the ex- had in years. Although Beljanski’s extracts tracts spread, French officials grew increas- were not discussed publicly, Mitterand’s use ingly uncomfortable. In 1989, France’s of them was widely known. Popular demand minister of social affairs and health, Claude for them burgeoned as Mitterand finished Évin, filed the first charge against Beljan- out his term in office. ski of illegally practicing medicine. A court Nearly a year after stepping down from found him not guilty. Similar cycles of char- the presidency, Mitterand died on January ges and acquittals ensued until 1994, when a 8, 1996. Later that month, Dr. Gubler pub- very special, secret patient made a request. lished his version of the story in a book Confident of success, the Beljanskis hired called Le Grand Secret, naming Mirko Bel- consultants to conduct the lengthy process janski and claiming the extracts were a hoax. of seeking approval of the supplements from France’s equivalent of the Food and Drug HROUGHOUT HER CHILDHOOD AND Administration. young adulthood, Sylvie Beljanski— By 1994, President Mitterand was in pain Tthe daughter born in New York during with metastatic cancer and facing expecta- her father’s fellowship there—relied on her tions that he would not survive to serve out mother’s parents for the emotional support the year and a half remaining in his term. her own parents were too busy to provide. Two years prior, he had revealed following a She graduated from law school, became an brief hospital stay that he had prostate cancer attorney and kept in contact with her parents but that it was not life-threatening. In truth, periodically, but the relationship was cool he had first been diagnosed in 1981 but had and distant. “My grandmother was central to managed to keep it a closely guarded secret. my upbringing. I was so lucky to have her,” Many in the country were apprehensive she remembers. “I knew my parents loved

SUMMER 2016 THEOPTIMIST.COM 29 patients begging them to resume production of the supplements they credited with pro- longing their lives. Nearly two years into the odyssey, Bel- janski asked his daughter if there was anything more she could do legally to move the case forward. Flummoxed, she suggested filing an action with the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, which could order France to schedule a trial, close AFRICAN SHRUB RAUWOLFIA VOMITORIA the case and allow Beljanski to resume his HAS BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES TO TREAT HYPERTENSION, MENTAL DISTURBANCES, research. SNAKEBITE AND CHOLERA. Please do that, he replied. Shortly after- wards—on October 28, 1998—he died. Although France considered the criminal matter concluded following Beljanski’s me, and I’m sure they knew I loved them, represent her mother and start looking for death, his widow and daughter continued but we definitely were not close. I did not her father, who, it turns out, was being held the human rights case. Years later, when the really know what they were doing. It looked in custody at CIRIS and would be trans- matter was brought before the court, Syl- complicated. They were always in a bad ported to a Parisian jail the next day. She vie heard arguments in the government’s mood and having trouble with the people headed to the airport. defense that she characterized as “baseless, surrounding them, so I did not try to stick Less than a month later, Mirko Beljan- silly, shameful.” On May 23, 2002, the around. I had my own life.” ski—who had been taking low doses of his court ruled unanimously that Mirko Beljan- In 1994, Mirko Beljanski asked his plant extracts as a cancer preventive—was ski had been denied due process and the op- daughter for legal advice about terminating diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and portunity to defend his scientific legacy. The a licensing contract for some of his patents. was fighting for his life. Because the gov- judges levied a small civil penalty against Intrigued, she began to explore the details ernment had confiscated and destroyed all France to cover the Beljanskis’ legal fees. of his work and helped him with a few of of his extracts and RNA fragment therapies, The case was closed—but not for Sylvie the legal aspects of his business. Cautious- Beljanski had no choice but to undergo trad- and Monique. ly, they began to draw closer. A year later, itional chemotherapy. As is common for Shortly before her father’s death, Sylvie Sylvie moved to a New York law firm, but cancer patients, the treatment felt worse than had promised him she would do what she she continued to call her parents regularly the underlying disease. could to get his supplements back on the to check on them. Reaching her father at As her father became sicker, Sylvie market, but this time in America. With the CIRIS was easy, she said, because one of the Beljanski found herself drawn ever deeper last of his energy, Beljanski summarized the 17 employees usually picked up after a ring into the details of his life’s work. “I started details of his life’s work as best he could, or two. to take action and responsibility from day shipped the few records he still had to New But on the morning of October 9, 1996, one,” she says. “That was my way to take York and shared the names and contact in- no one answered her repeated calls. She care of them.” Her mother patiently began formation of some of CIRIS’s prescribing called the family apartment in Paris where to walk her through the complicated science doctors. At her father’s funeral, a man she’d her mother lived and was startled to hear a of what they had been doing for nearly 50 never met before whispered quietly to her: deep, husky voice. years, and Sylvie worked to prepare their “We have to talk. You did promise to your “Hello? Mother?” she asked. criminal defense. father to continue, right?” Wondering how “I’m a police officer. You cannot speak to But as the months ticked by, there was this man could possibly know that, she your mother. She is under arrest,” the voice little for her to do. In France, no jury is re- agreed. Curtly, he told her he would meet replied. quired to indict criminal suspects. Instead, her at her family’s apartment at 4 p.m. the Stunned, Sylvie immediately went into she says, the prosecutor filed indictments— next day. lawyer mode. “I’m her attorney,” she told and then sat on the case. She couldn’t get Gerard Weidlich—Beljanski’s first HIV the officer. “Put her on the line.” access to the government’s evidence or its patient from back in 1986—arrived as Grudgingly, the man did. Monique told experts. No trial date was ever set. Her par- scheduled. With him were a woman, Hen- her daughter that officers had arrived at six ents had been placed in the legal purgatory riette Bouchet, who had been taking Pao in the morning and were turning the apart- of house arrest, forbidden to conduct any pereira for 12 years after her breast cancer ment upside down looking for something, scientific research, speak publicly about diagnosis, and a man—Jean-Paul le Perlier, but hadn’t said what it was they were seek- their previous work, publish any study re- a journalist assigned in 1993 to investigate ing. Sylvie arranged for a French attorney to sults or interact with the hundreds of cancer “the charlatan” Mirko Beljanski—who had

30 THEOPTIMIST.COM SUMMER 2016 recently been told he was dying of advanced enough products that Sylvie Beljanski could colon cancer. quit the last of her part-time law practice. French president The visiting trio told Sylvie that they had She now works exclusively for Natural been trying to keep CIRIS going after her Source, where she holds the title of presi- François Mitterand parents’ arrest—Weidlich had become president, and for the family foundation, where dent of the organization by that time—but she is vice president and her 85-year-old took Beljanski’s the government had frozen CIRIS’ bank ac- mother is president. counts. More than 4,000 “supporting mem- extracts for prostate bers” were willing to donate money to get ARCO BELJANSKI PUBLISHED the research going again, he told her. “All 133 peer-reviewed studies of his cancer and grew you have to do,” he said, “is come up with Mwork before his death, and tests of stronger, gained the extracts, restore the research program the compounds continue in the lab (in vitro) and find a way to send us our treatments.” and in animal models (in vivo). For a variety It was a tall order for an attorney with no of reasons, only a smattering of clinical trials weight and began to background in science or medicine. But she on human patients has been done. A big part agreed, and serendipity continued to be on of the problem, notes researcher Qi Chen, look healthier than he their side. who is working on the Beljanski project at A few days after that initial meeting, she the University of Kansas Medical Center, had in years. got a phone call from one of CIRIS’ raw- is that plant extracts contain so many dif- materials suppliers. When the company was ferent molecules that it’s difficult to know raided in October 1996, government agents which substance is doing what. “We need had taken all of the unprocessed plant ma- to understand how each of the compounds terial and finished product they could find. involved is processed in the body,” Chen But the agents failed to look inside the pro- explains. “But when you extract things from cessing machinery and missed hundreds of a plant, you get a mixture of a lot of com- liters of extract. The company had managed ponents. There’s a battery of experiments to stash away the extract in several barrels. that needs to be done on each compound in They couldn’t do anything with it in France the mixture.” because they remained under surveillance. Testing synthetic molecules such as Would Sylvie like them to ship the extract those developed by large pharmaceutical to New York? companies is a far more straightforward Back in New York, she incorporated a process. Sylvie Beljanski and Natural new company, Natural Source International, Source’s chief research scientist, John to receive the extract and begin developing Hall, have tried unsuccessfully to persuade new products. Simultaneously, she set up pharmaceutical companies to consider a nonprofit group, the Beljanski Founda- working with the extracts. tion, to renew CIRIS’ fundraising efforts “My father wanted to study natural com- and promote further independent research pounds with the same rigorous approach as into Beljanski’s products through American if they were synthetic drugs,” Sylvie says. laboratories. Doing so, however, creates a catch-22. “It’s The original CIRIS infrastructure began a patent thing. If there is no patent to be ob- to emerge from France with client lists, tained, there is no funding to be had. But to doctor referrals, raw-materials sources and get a patent, you need to have a new mol- extract formulas. As an attorney, she knew ecule, and you can’t have a new molecule if that the U.S. Food and Drug Administra- it’s derived from a natural source. You have tion doesn’t regulate dietary supplements. to tweak nature to get a return on your in- So, to ensure that Natural Source’s products vestment. But when you tweak nature, you were regarded as dietary supplements, she put something synthetic in your body, and it registered each of them with the FDA as a won’t work the same way.” new dietary ingredient. She still had most Nonetheless, research continues today at of her parents’ toxicity studies to prove the both the University of Kansas and Columbia substances weren’t harmful, which eased the University Medical Center, as well as at the FDA registration. privately held Cancer Treatment Centers of By 1999, Natural Source was selling America.

SUMMER 2016 THEOPTIMIST.COM 31 The results have been consistently posi- treatment plans are thoroughly discredited. The extracts alone or tive. With backing from the Beljanski Foun- “In science, ultimately, the whole structure dation, Chen and her colleagues conducted is conservative,” he says. “It holds on to its in combination with two separate studies on pancreatic cancer in paradigms and ideas as long as it can. It can 2013 and 2014, one to test Rauwolfia vomi- be messy when it changes.” chemotherapy toria and the other to test Pao pereira. While But inevitably—inexorably—it does the extracts alone killed a large percentage of change. Over the past 15 years, scores prevented the cancer the cancer cells, combining the extracts with of “integrative medicine” centers have chemotherapeutic drugs proved even more opened across the United States. Unlike from metastasizing. effective—and offered the added bonus of so-called alternative medicine, integrative reducing the amount of chemotherapy need- medicine seeks to develop treatments that ed. In some cases, chemotherapy alone did combine the best of classic medical care nothing to stop the cancer from spreading, with natural or botanical products, nutri- while using the extracts alone or in combination, acupuncture and other complementary tion with chemotherapy prevented the can- approaches. Both of the U.S. universities cer from metastasizing. doing further studies on the Beljanski ex- Kansas researchers also conducted simi- tracts and RNA fragments—Columbia lar tests for each extract against ovarian and Kansas—have been conducting that cancer. Again, combining the extracts with research through their integrative medicine common chemotherapy drugs proved much centers. And Cancer Treatment Centers more effective than chemotherapy alone. In of America highlights its integrative care some cases, the combination destroyed up to model prominently. The American Hos- 98 percent of cancer cells. pital Association surveyed its members in Studies of Pao pereira at Columbia Uni- 2011 about whether they currently offered, versity Medical Center, in New York, and or planned to offer, CAM—complement- Nanjing University, in China, have shown ary and alternative medicine—therapies. that it is effective at both preventing and At that time, 42 percent of American hos- fighting prostate cancer as well as having a pitals already were offering at least one of strong anti-inflammatory effect. Unlike in these treatments, and 85 percent of the re- other cancers, however, researchers found maining hospitals were exploring adding that too little or too much of the extract—de- CAM therapies soon. scribed in statistics as a U-shaped curve, or Researcher Chen, from Kansas, who has in the vernacular as the “Goldilocks zone”— an extensive background working with Chi- reduced the extract’s benefit. Earlier stud- nese herbal medicines, believes the mixture ies of Rauwolfia vomitoria did not show the of molecules in Beljanski’s plant extracts are same U-curve; instead, more cancer cells both beneficial and problematic. responded as dosage increased. “Sometimes a mixture is better than a Thrombocytopenia (low blood platelets) single compound. When Chinese herbs are is caused by chemotherapy. Because some studied, they purify it down to the point chemotherapy drugs destroy healthy cells that they lose the beneficial activity or they alongside cancerous ones—particularly increase the toxicity,” she says. “But these in the bone marrow—many patients must extracts are so much messier to work with. stop or modify their chemotherapy sched- They work on so many targets that you can ule. A 2010 clinical trial with 70 patients at get lost about which way to chase them the Cancer Treatment Centers of America clinically.” showed that Beljanski’s RNA fragments Nonetheless, if she were to become a induce bone marrow stem cells to produce cancer patient herself, she believes she more platelets, allowing patients to com- would turn to both classical treatments and plete their full course of chemotherapy the extracts. without interruption. “Why not? There’s no harm,” she says. So why aren’t more doctors and research- “And it does look like they work.” ers working with these compounds? In short, explains Hall, the Beljanski Founda- JANET RAE-DUPREE is a Northern California tion’s senior scientific adviser, doctors are freelance writer who cover science, medi- loath to try any new therapies until the old cine and innovation.

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